and I would like to access my Emacs and Eclipse windows on the Linux box from my Windows machine with minimal latency.

My options seem to be:

VNC

Virtualization of a Linux guest on my local Windows host using for example Virtualbox with Ubuntu, and then ssh -X to the Linux box from it (here is a thread that discusses configurations for fast ssh X tunneling)

cygwin with an X server and ssh -X to the remote box.

At the moment I use RealVNC, but I have noticed some notable latency. After doing some research I read on Wikipedia the following:

The VNC protocol is pixel-based. Although this leads to great
flexibility (i.e.- any type of desktop can be displayed), it is often
less efficient than solutions that have a better understanding of the
underlying graphic layout like X11 or Windows Remote Desktop Protocol

This makes me wonder, what options do I have to get the fastest access to remote X windows from a local Windows machine?

ssh -X is what i use via putty, some colleagues use xming though.
–
h3rrmillerOct 12 '12 at 15:11

ssh tunneling comes to mind but how can you control latency introduced by the network? Latency of VNC introduction could potentially be significantly lower then the one introduced by the network.
–
KarlsonOct 12 '12 at 15:31

In addition, to VNC and ssh-X-forwarding, there is Spice. I do not know if you can use it as it is mainly developed for virtual machines.
–
jofelOct 12 '12 at 15:32

Thanks. @h3rrmiller I thought you neededxming to do remote X with Putty. How exactly do you ssh -X in Putty? I have clicked on Enable X11 forwarding in Putty, but this does not seem to be enough.
–
Amelio Vazquez-ReinaOct 12 '12 at 15:32

3

@user27915816 yes, for X11 forwarding with putty, you need xming running in the background.
–
jofelOct 12 '12 at 15:34

2 Answers
2

I think the state of the art for the maximum bandwidth is NX, an X11 protocol compression program. It should perform well with respect to latency too. Try using the Windows NX client and the free NX server on Linux.

If possible, use a direct TCP connection instead of SSH. Of course, this is only viable in a controlled environment with no security worries.

I think in most setups a virtual machine running locally will give you the best latency. Even better, run Emacs and Eclipse under Windows; make them edit remote files, or (for even better results) make them edit local files which you then synchronize with Unison or through a version control system.

Windows Remote Desktop works just fine -- as long as you run xrdp on the Linux box (and in my experience, it is significantly less annoying and more responsive than VNC).

xrdp runs an X server on the Linux box, and then hooks that up to RDP.

In fact, even though I usually have Linux on both ends of this wire, I typically prefer rdesktop to xrdp over VNC whenever plain X11 forwarding proves too sluggish. VNC is just a French acronym for "doesn't work very well".